


The Healing Power Of Little Old Ladies

by PepperF



Series: Diego whump [17]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Diego Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Gen, Racism, Whumptober 2020, racial profiling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27062068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PepperF/pseuds/PepperF
Summary: Diego never really thought of himself as Hispanic.Well, that's not quite accurate. It's on the list of things that describe him, like his height and weight, his powers, and everything else—but it was just one of those characteristics that Dad deemed unimportant—and so it was never important to Diego, either. Some of his siblings dug more, but Diego always vaguely thought of it as something he'd look into someday, when he had time. There were always other priorities.So it doesn't occur to him that it might be something that other people notice until he leaves the Academy and strikes out on his own.
Series: Diego whump [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951318
Comments: 8
Kudos: 107
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	The Healing Power Of Little Old Ladies

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Bethany for beta-reading and also advice and guidance on this. Extra-special guest star thanks to Bethany's friend Jen, for giving this a sensitivity read, because this is NOT my culture, and I really didn't want to offend anyone - but I did want to bring it up as an important aspect of this character. Please don't think of this as my attempting to trivialise any of these issues, or to turn them into entertainment: I honestly believe in the importance of including this stuff in fiction. I have given Diego an easier time of things in his encounters with the police, relative to what happens in the real world, because that was the level I felt was appropriate. If anyone has comments on this fic especially (positive or negative), I'd love to hear them.
> 
> I actually wrote this fic before I'd watched David Castañeda's recent appearance on Robert Sheehan's Earth Locker podcast (which I highly recommend). On it, he talked briefly about the time he was handcuffed and put in a police car when he was just out in his parent's yard, and his hesitation about wearing a mask because he was afraid of how people would react to him, a MOC, with a face covering...and, honestly, I was shocked and appalled at that last part especially, because it was an aspect that had just never occurred to me. It brought home to me the importance of listening to POC about their experiences.

Diego never really thought of himself as Hispanic.

Well, that's not quite accurate. It's on the list of things that describe him, like his height and weight, his powers, and everything else—but it was just one of those characteristics that Dad deemed unimportant—and so it was never important to Diego, either. Mom brought it up when he was choosing a name for himself, and that was cool, but he never learned to speak Spanish (or any of the other languages on offer; words were never Diego's—you know— _thing_ ), or researched the culture of his birth parents. He knows they were Mexican, living in America when he was born, which Mom says makes him Mexican-American, but that's about it. Some of his siblings dug more, asked more questions, did more research—Klaus learned a smattering of German, Ben got Mom to make some Korean recipes, and Allison studied the African-American civil rights movement—but Diego always vaguely thought of it as something he'd look into someday, when he had time. There were always other priorities.

So it doesn't occur to him that it might be something that other people notice until he leaves the Academy and strikes out on his own. 

Even then, it takes a while to sink in. He's stopped and searched by cops a lot, but he's seventeen and wearing like twenty knives, so that's not really a surprise, even to a sheltered Academy kid. No offence to other seventeen-year-old boys or whatever, but that shit's dangerous if you don't have the training; of fucking course he looks suspicious. He just has to tell them who he is, show them the tattoo and a few tricks, and they usually let him go straight away. He even gets a few thank-yous. He thinks of the police as colleagues, sort of, and if some of them can be, well, a little patronizing maybe, he's sure they'll change their tune once they start to see what he can accomplish in the city.

It's not really until he gets a job (because it's that or literally starve on the street) and starts wearing ordinary-person clothes some of the time, that it starts to dawn on him that something else is happening here. The first time he's stopped in his dish-washing clothes and pressed up against a police car, that's also the first time that he hears: "...fits the description... Hispanic male, gang tattoos..."

That first time, his reaction is outrage on behalf of the Academy. "Hey, asshole! You don't even know what this is?!"

He pulls back his sleeve a little more, and suddenly there's a gun in the cop's hand. Diego freezes out of surprise more than anything. "Put your hands on the vehicle," snaps the man. "Where I can see 'em!"

He's never actually been scared of people on the right side of the law, before. Slowly, he turns back and puts his hands on the car, heartbeat thudding in his ears. "Listen," he says, "I'm not w-who you're looking for, okay? My name is—"

"Are we gonna have a problem here?"

"No. Officer," he adds. "But if you'll just—" He falls silent when he feels the muzzle prod him in the kidneys, and decides that it's probably best to wait to talk to someone more reasonable down at the station.

It's a long night, and he's exhausted when they finally let him go, after a long wait, numerous checks, and finally a phone call to the Academy to verify that he's not making it all up (he's pretty sure they spoke to Pogo, and he would have given an entire week's wages to have witnessed that discussion taking place in person). It's the first time he's been fingerprinted, but it won't be his last. No one thanks him for what he did with the Umbrella Academy. The sun is coming up as he steps out of the station, and he blinks, yawns, and realizes that he's got no idea how to get home. Consequently, when he finally does get there, he oversleeps and is late for his next shift, and is given a first and final warning—but if he's learned anything from the experience, it's how to bite his tongue.

He starts to get used to it. He spends a lot of time walking through bad neighborhoods, at unusual times of the day or night, either because of the shitty rooms he can afford to rent and the series of odd jobs he takes, or because of his budding role as a protector of the city (he's working on what exactly he'll call himself), so...maybe he's asking for it? They're the law, he's on their side, so they're probably not bad guys, they're just...a little quick to leap to conclusions. And they're not as well-trained as him, they haven’t been raised by Sir Reginald Hargreeves, so if he takes a slightly longer route—over the rooftops, for example—they're much less likely to spot him. Honestly, most of them wouldn't last a week at the Academy. It's fine. He can work around it.

But it's exhausting. Keeping an eye out for trouble he can fix, while avoiding trouble he never earned, while also holding down a job and paying bills (another thing he was sheltered from in the Academy)—he is _so fucking tired_. He even considers going back home a few times. The only thing that stops him is the reflection that he might not actually be welcomed, and wouldn't that be more humiliating than anything else? 

\---

His day shift at the local grocery store finishes at 5pm, and he's on his way out when he sees the old lady who lives upstairs from him struggling with a large bag of groceries, and—well, he might have been raised to kill, but he was also raised to have good fucking manners, so he stops and very politely asks, "Uh, ma'am? Mrs. Rodriguez? You want me to carry that for you?"

She squints suspiciously, but after a long moment, her brow lightens. "Oh! The boy from four-oh-seven. Yes, yes, you can carry this." She drops the entire thing in his arms, and he has to juggle, but soon has it under control. It's not all that heavy, so he offers her his arm as well, which she graciously takes. Diego hides a smile. "Such a good boy. You remind me of my great-nephew." She pinches his arm as they walk slowly back to the apartment block. "You don't introduce yourself when you talk to a lady?"

"Sorry. My name is Diego," he says.

"And where are you from, Diego?"

"Uh, Northside."

"No, no. Your parents. From...?"

It's a complicated question, but he's tired and he's experienced enough outside the Academy by now to guess what she's really asking, so he says, "Mexico." 

And her face absolutely lights up, as if she'd just won the state lottery. "Ah! _¿De dónde en México? Yo misma soy de Tamaulipas._ "

"Uh, sorry...I don't speak Spanish."

She tuts. " _¿Qué les enseñan a los niños estos días?_ Where in Mexico do your parents come from?" She says the latter bit slowly and loudly, as if he's suddenly become hard of hearing as well as inexplicably monolingual.

"I, um." He's not sure how he got into this conversation, and wishes he could extract himself somehow, without being rude. "I never knew them. I'm adopted."

"Oh, _pobrecito_!" She pats his arm, and he might not speak Spanish but he's pretty sure she just called him 'poor kid' or something, which just... no.

But he still helps her home, and next time she sees him, she gives him a bright smile, and lets him carry her shopping. And after that, it's a thing.

\---

He barely noticed turning eighteen, fresh out of the Academy and trying to survive on his own for the first time. That first year was rough. Now he's turning nineteen, and he feels like he's found his feet a little, even if he's not sure what he wants to do with his life. But he's still not sure he feels like celebrating. It's all too tied up with his siblings and Dad and that whole mess...it's easier to tell himself that he's forgotten about it again, and move on.

He's in the middle of a workout when there's a knock on his door, and he collapses to the floor and rolls over, panting. Whoever it is, they can just—

It's Mrs. Rodriguez, and she's brought...a cake. It's white, with some kind of whipped topping, and on the top in wobbly, lime green icing, it reads, 'DIEGO'.

He has to clear his throat twice before he's sure he's not going to embarrass himself. "Mrs. Rodriguez, you really didn't need to."

"Nonsense. It's your birthday, yes?" She narrows her eyes. "The Umbrella Academy children, I know." She pushes past him before he can come up with a response, and into his apartment, tutting at the mess. "Boys!" is her summation, pushing aside his boxing gloves to put the cake down on his little fold-out table. "This is your first lesson in the culture of your birthright," she announces, brandishing a knife. "Pastel de tres leches!"

It is...sweet. Incredibly, cloyingly, horrifyingly sweet and creamy, and—not bad, once his taste buds have, presumably, gone into shock. He hasn’t had cake since he left home. It's not something he bothered to buy for himself, and so in a roundabout way it reminds him of Mom—which shoots a pang of homesickness through him so acute that his throat closes up around another mouthful of (actually, kind of delicious) cake.

"Thank you," he says, huskily, when he's managed to swallow down both cake and emotion. 

Mrs. Rodriguez shakes her head. "You say, _'gracias, abuela'_ ," she tells him, firmly.

And slowly, haltingly, another piece that makes up Diego slots itself into place.


End file.
